Gifted
Directed by: Marc Webb
Written by: Tom Flynn
Starring: Chris Evans, McKenna Grace, Lindsay Duncan, Octavia Spencer, Jenny Slate, John M. Jackson, Glenn Plummer, Elizabeth Marvel
Drama - 101 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 7 Apr 2017
Written by: Tom Flynn
Starring: Chris Evans, McKenna Grace, Lindsay Duncan, Octavia Spencer, Jenny Slate, John M. Jackson, Glenn Plummer, Elizabeth Marvel
Drama - 101 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 7 Apr 2017
I only saw (500) Days of Summer once and it remains my favorite film from 2009 and one my favorite from the entire decade. I still remember the raw emotion and brilliant filmmaking and either I am not ready to submit myself to it again or else do not want to lessen the magic I felt walking out of the theater. Therefore, I was less than thrilled with director Marc Webb’s subsequent projects rebooting the unnecessary Spider-Man franchise with Andrew Garfield and am again slack-jawed at his choice in follow-up projects. Where (500) Days of Summer was honest and earnest, Gifted is manipulative and lives only for those key courtroom soliloquy scenes he knows will make some of the ladies reach for their tissues.
Gifted has all the visual and plot cues of a Nicholas Sparks rip-off. There is the intercostal waterway, boats, and dockside restaurants. There is an impossibly Adonis-like superhuman man, this time Chris Evans, and a central conflict to overcome before the good guys can live happily ever after. The twist in this forgettable weepy are that all of the intellectually gifted characters in the film are female. Little seven year-old Mary (McKenna Grace) is a math prodigy just like her deceased mother, and her ice cold British-transplant Boston grandmother Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan, Alice Through the Looking Glass). Mary’s Uncle Frank (Evans, Captain America: Civil War) wants Mary to grow up in a normal environment like St. Petersburg, Florida with friends and hobbies while evil grandma Evelyn wants Mary transported and locked up inside the ivory tower at once.
Gifted has all the visual and plot cues of a Nicholas Sparks rip-off. There is the intercostal waterway, boats, and dockside restaurants. There is an impossibly Adonis-like superhuman man, this time Chris Evans, and a central conflict to overcome before the good guys can live happily ever after. The twist in this forgettable weepy are that all of the intellectually gifted characters in the film are female. Little seven year-old Mary (McKenna Grace) is a math prodigy just like her deceased mother, and her ice cold British-transplant Boston grandmother Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan, Alice Through the Looking Glass). Mary’s Uncle Frank (Evans, Captain America: Civil War) wants Mary to grow up in a normal environment like St. Petersburg, Florida with friends and hobbies while evil grandma Evelyn wants Mary transported and locked up inside the ivory tower at once.
The best thing Gifted has going for it is the buddy/buddy back-and-forth dynamic between Chris Evans and young McKenna Grace. They bicker about day-to-day frustrations like legos left on the floor but their sunset on the beach conversations about if there is a God are believable and effective. They each have some emotional heavy-lifting to muddle through as they promise each other they will never be separated and what is in the best interest of everyone involved, but the two succeed despite the eye-rolling script.
Frank is a boat repairman, a patient and sympathetic father-figure, and a non-practicing philosophy professor with a heart of gold; standard Nicholas Sparks leading man material. If Mary was the same as her peers and was just learning how to add single digits using her fingers, there would be no conflict and Evelyn would not have to inconvenience herself with high-priced lawyers and family court. However, Mary devours mathematic formulas with symbols I don’t even recognize. Next door neighbor, Roberta (Octavia Spencer, Bad Santa 2) knows Frank is wrong to send Mary to public school because it will just stir up a hornet’s nest when people recognize what they have on their hands.
Roberta’s sole reason to exist is to give Frank the business and threaten him with bodily harm if he screws up with Mary or at worst, has her taken away. Octavia Spencer is completely wasted in the role. Compare Roberta with recent Spencer characters that have an actual third dimension like her Oscar-winning performance in The Help or her nominated role in last year’s Hidden Figures. This is a curious step down for Spencer. Duncan also plays a cardboard character in Evelyn. Usually, the villain in a melodrama will backtrack halfway through and the audience will see them as complex and maybe take a few steps in their shoes. Not Evelyn. Marc Webb never brings her back and she exists as a push button mechanism to stir up the audience as she views Mary as a machine to be oiled and programmed.
It’s also a bit shallow how Webb juxtaposes the Tampa Bay area with what he shows as a stuffy and uptight Boston. This is actually not Tampa Bay on screen as once again Hollywood replaces the area with coastal Georgia near Savannah. Ben Affleck did the same location switch in Live by Night last year. Of course, directors and actors are free to choose whatever projects move them. Marc Webb, Chris Evans, and Octavia Spencer see something in the cloying and reductive machinations of Gifted. This is Hallmark Hall of Fame material and wastes the talents of all involved. But watch out for the one-eyed cat Fred; he steals the show right out from under everyone.
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